4/05/2014 12:06:00 am -
Reported by
Marcus

Jones was one of a select group who not only wrote for Doctor Who but also appeared in it.

Born in Durban in South Africa, Jones trained as an actor, touring the country with the National Theatre Company. He arrived in London in the 1950s, having worked his passage to the United Kingdom, entering the country with about five pounds in his pocket. He worked for The Sunday Times and Kemsley Newspapers before returning to acting in weekly rep first at New Brighton and then at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.

In 1964 he met David Whitaker, the first story editor on Doctor Who, at a dinner party hosted by Trevor Bannister of Are You Being Served fame. The result was that he was commissioned to write The Space Museum for the second series of the show. By the time the script entered production the story editor was Dennis Spooner, who cut much of the humorous elements from the script, much to Jones's dismay. He would later write the Target novelisation of his scripts, reinstating much of this material.

Jones would write only one script for the series, a second was rejected by a later production team, but he would return as an actor, appearing as Krans, one of a group of GalSec colonists stranded on Earth, in the 1975 story The Sontaran Experiment.

Other work as an actor included appearing in London's West End in Reunion in Vienna, Brassbound's Convention and Measure for Measure. In America he played Dodge in Buried Child and Eddie Carbone in A View from the Bridge. He wrote the screenplay for the 1964 Oscar-nominated film A King's Story, based on the life of Edward VIII, and was chief writer for the fondly-remembered children's series Here Come the Double Deckers.

His autobiography No Official Umbrella was published in 2008.

Jones died peacefully at home in Vamos, Crete, on Wednesday 2 April 2014. His death was announced on his blog.